Eat your Wheaties, get a Merc

Don't just swing anywhere

Lately I have been hunting in parks that are adjacent to some of the more historical landmarks in town. The focal point of the hunt has not been on the "center of the action" spots that most everyday people would think would be the place to swing your coil. Instead, I look at an area and see if there is any evidence of recent soil disturbance. What you aim for is areas that have not gotten any attention from the maintenance crew. These grounds tend to hold the older coin at a shallower depth than most other areas where there is often many rounds of topsoil removal and reseeding.

The Wheaties keep coming

Lately I have not shied away from the obvious "penny" signals. Sometimes these come out of the ground as old wheat pennies, and sometimes come out of unexpected places. I recently pulled a 1926 Wheat out of a pile of silt that had piled up from a wall drain - only 1 inch from the surface! Oldest one to date, 1919, came from a strip of grass across from the ol' swimming hole.

 

The first Mercury Dime, quite the surprise!

While on my hunt right next to an old train depot, I got an unusual VDI signal coming from my XTerra 705 that I have not seen before (at least one that was this consistent). Keep giving a solid "46" from all angles I approached it so I decided to check it out. About 5-6inches down, what I initially imagined to be just some type of "can slaw" ended up being a nice shiny silver piece for me. Imagine my surprise when I took it out thinking it was a silver Rosie and it ended up being my very first Mercury dime - dated 1942! That find made my day. After some research, I discovered 1942 had a small portion of Mercs that were minted with a "2" stamped over last "1" in "1941" - these coins are worth about $250-600 depending on the condition. Closer inspection revealed I did not have this error coin but it was exciting for a brief moment to think I found something potentially rare.

Have some other finds to post from other hunts, so stay tuned.

Sophomore season yields first silver!

So as a follow up to my set of hunts I made that resulted in the discovery of the old button. That same park that gave me my first gold along with other interesting finds ended up giving me my first "deep" signal. I can understand now what the veterans speak of when they refer to "deep" signal. Some people refer to deep targets as giving a "narrow" signal - I guess this is one way to describe it. The signal is narrow in that it barely exceeds the threshold limit set by your machine and its detection area is rather "narrow" or "smaller" than compared to a target that is shallower. (Not sure if any of this made sense, as I have been frustrated myself with trying to understand what others have used to describe how deep targets are picked up). If anything, the only way someone can understand how a deep target is picked up by their machine is purely a matter of experience with detector and knowing what it is trying to tell you.

Anyway, back to the point here - my XTerra gave a consistent 38-40 signal and I immediately thought "here's another dime." After I extracted it from about 6-7inches down, I was surprised on how clean it looked fresh out of the ground. Well, to my surprise I read a "1947" on my very first silver coin. It certainly highlighted the hunt and just like finding my first gold, it made me want to find more of these awesome coins.

Glad to have another first checked off my list of finds - not a bad start to my sophomore season of detecting. Hopefully a sign of things to come.

Prospecting anyone?

Well, it has been awhile since I have posted something and this time I ventured back into the hills of the Little Belt mountains just outside the old mining town of Neihart. In its heyday, Neihart had booming silver and silver operations that was carried by rail freight into Great Falls to the Anaconda smelter for refining. Gold was a secondary product of their work. When I say secondary I mean the ore was treated with cyanide to extract the precious metal.

Anyway, I tried my hand for the first time to use my XTerra in prospecting mode (audio only - no target ID to help me out). I believe I still have to get used to the sensitivity and threshold settings but during the two hour venture on the mountain side I got a better ear for targets. Some more DEET spray would have been handy, as I was sweating pretty good in the humidity. I recovered some .22 caliber bullets and some old wire. Not bad - I will try my hand around the old mine shafts later and check out some areas where some placer gold is said to be around. Ah yes, it is true what they say. Gold is where you find it. And today I did not find it.